Sunday, June 6, 2010

Cab Oswald took after JFK assassination sells for $35,750

A worn-out Checker cab that once served as Lee Harvey Oswald's getaway car was sold for $35,750 at an auction Saturday to the representative of an Illinois car museum.

The unrestored 1962 Marathon-built taxi will go to Historic Auto Attractions of Rockford, Ill., where it will be displayed along with other memorabilia connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

The collection includes the ambulance that transported a dying Oswald to Parkland Hospital two days later, said Wayne Lensing, museum president.

"Kennedy just has such a charisma and a mystique about him that I think people are interested in," Lensing said.

The cab was the subject of spirited bidding at the auction in Cresson, just south of Fort Worth, said Keith Koscak, automotive specialist with RM Auctions. Bids also came in by phone and Internet from as far away as Switzerland.

The pre-auction estimate was $30,000.

Oswald hailed the cab moments after Kennedy was shot. The accused assassin first tried to take a bus, which quickly became gridlocked in heavy traffic.

The driver of the cab, William Wayne Whaley, later recalled that Oswald gave him a 5-cent tip on a 95-cent fare to Oak Cliff.

Whaley died in an automobile accident in 1965.

The cab company donated it in 1979 to the Pate Museum of Transportation in Cresson. That museum closed last year.